Vanity of Vanities

Vanity of Vanities is one of the small group of moralizing or allegorical designs by Katsushika Hokusai that fall outside his familiar landscape series. Dated around 1835, the print uses imagery of the Buddhist concept of mujo, or impermanence, to comment on the ephemerality of wealth, beauty, and fame in late Edo society. Such themes were closely tied to Pure Land and Zen iconography that Hokusai engaged with throughout his life, particularly in the decade leading up to his great Hundred Views of Mount Fuji books. The composition pairs symbolic objects, figures, or skeletal imagery with text in a manner familiar from Edo ukiyo-e prints intended as much for contemplation as for entertainment, and it relies on Hokusai's signature linework rather than elaborate color blocks. The Art Institute of Chicago example preserves the relatively restrained palette and crisp keyblock impression typical of the artist's late-career work in this register. While Vanity of Vanities does not have the wide popular recognition of the Mount Fuji prints, it is invaluable for understanding the philosophical undercurrent that runs through Hokusai's mature output. As an ukiyo-e print it shows how the form, often associated with hedonism and the floating world, could equally carry images of transience and self-reflection. It also illustrates how, even within a single decade, Hokusai moved between commercial landscape commissions and more private, religiously inflected designs without ever losing his commanding sense of pictorial structure.